If it is missing, everything works as today: any parameter declared in
$sysconfdir/openmpi-mca-params.conf is considered as system-wide and can
be overwritten as usual.

>
> Can the file name ( openmpi-priv-mca-params.conf ) also be configurable ?

No, it isn't, presently, but this can be changed if needed.

Regards,
Nadia

>
> Rich
>
>
> On 9/3/09 5:23 AM, "Nadia Derbey" <Nadia.Derbey_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
>
>
> What: Define a way for the system administrator to prevent users from
> overwriting the default system-wide MCA parameters settings.
>
> Why: Letting the user completely free of changing any MCA parameter
> that has been defined on a system-wide basis may sometimes be
> undesirable.
>
> Where: code can be found at
> http://derbeyn@bitbucket.org/derbeyn/opal-ro-mca-params/>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Description:
>
>
> Letting the user completely free of changing any parameter that has been
> defined on a system-wide basis may sometimes be undesirable. For
> example, on a node with multiple TCP interfaces, the system
> administrator may for some reason want to restrict MPI applications to a
> fixed subset of these TCP interfaces.
>
> Today, there is no way for the system administrator to prevent users
> from overwriting the default system-wide settings: even if he has
> excluded eth0 from the interfaces usable by an MPI application, he
> cannot prevent any user from explicitly using that excluded interface.
>
> The purpose of this feature is to provide a new "system-wide-only"
> property for the MCA parameters, specifying that their system-wide
> value, if it has been defined, can never be overridden. This implies
> changing the existing parameters setting rules.
>
>
> Implementation:
>
> It should be noted that this feature is already described in
> https://svn.open-mpi.org/trac/ompi/ticket/75 as follows:
> "another MCA parameter file that has "privileged" MCA parameters. This
> file is hard-coded in the code base (based on $prefix, likely
> "$sysconfdir/openmpi-priv-mca-params.conf", or somesuch). Any parameters
> set in this file will be treated specially and cannot be overridden."
>
> But we chose another way to implement this feature: the file
> $sysconfdir/openmpi-mca-params.conf is kept with all the parameters
> settings (even those that are considered as system-wide-only).
> And the new file $sysconfdir/openmpi-priv-mca-params.conf is introduced
> to contain only the list of the "privileged" parameters (not their value).
> Doing it that way makes it easier to change the status of the MCA
> parameters: moving them from privileged to non privileged is only a
> matter of removing the new file, which preserves compatibility.
> While with the solution proposed in the ticket, we have to merge both files.
>
> The configuration files are parsed in the following order:
> 1. $sysconfdir/openmpi-mca-params.conf.
> 2. $sysconfdir/openmpi-priv-mca-params.conf
> 3. $HOME/.openmpi/mca-param.conf
>
> When openmpi-priv-mca-params.conf is parsed, any parameter listed in
> that file is moved from the mca_base_param_file_values list to a new
> parallel list (mca_base_priv_param_file_values). The parameter remains
> "hidden" in that new list.
> The lookup order has been changed: the new
> mca_base_priv_param_file_values list is the very 1st one to be scanned:
> this is how we ensure that the "privileged" parameters are never
> overwritten once defined on a system-wide basis.
>
> Other external changes:
> 1. The man page for mpirun(1) has been changed.
> 2. The ompi_info(1) output has been changed to reflect the status of
> these "privileged" parameters. The status field can now be one of
> "read-only", "writable" or "privileged".
> 3. A new option has been added to ompi_info(1): --privileged
> it outputs only the list of parameters that have been defined as
> system-wide-only.
>
>
> TODO list:
> . Make this feature configurable.
> . Output a warning message as described in the ticket.
>
>
> Possible extension to this functionality:
>
> This new functionality can be extended in the future in the following
> way: allow the administrator to specify boundaries within which an MCA
> parameter is allowed to be changed by a higher priority setting. This
> means that the administrator should declare min and max values (or even
> a set of discrete values) for any such parameter. Then, any higher
> priority setting will be done only if the new value belongs to the
> declared set.
> In other word, each MCA parameter can be
> 1. set to a given value in openmpi-mca-params.conf
> 2. declared in openmpi-priv-mca-params.conf with its allowed boundaries
> Then, if the user calls mpirun with that MCA parameter set in his
> private mca-params.conf file, or in an AMCA file, or in an environment
> variable, or on the command line, the new value will override the
> system-wide value only if it is within the declared boundaries.
>
> This could be thought of as a future development.
>
> --
> Nadia Derbey <Nadia.Derbey_at_[hidden]>
>
>
>
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